9 Copywork Poetry Quotes for Summer
What’s inside: Here are 9 poetry quotes to use for summer copywork. Get the free download by signing up for the newsletter.
Poetry Quotes with a Summer Theme
I’ve expanded the cursive copywork from the Summer chapter of The Poetry Hater’s Guide to Loving Poetry. There’s a free download for you at the end of the post.
Poetry Quotes
Summer Evening
Meeting at Night
The gray sea and the long black land;
Excerpt from Meeting at Night by Robert Browning
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Telling the Bees
“Child, O child, the grass is cool,
From Telling the Bees by Eugene Field
And the posies are waking to hear the song
Of the bird that swings by the shaded pool,
Waiting for one that tarrieth long.”
Milkweed
O patient creature with a peasant face,
Excerpt from Milkweed by Helen Hunt Jackson
Burnt by the summer sun, begrimed with stains,
And standing humbly in the dingy lanes!
The Way Through the Woods
They shut the road through the woods
Excerpt from The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
Summer Stars
A Bird Song
Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
From A Bird Song by Christina Rossetti
O’er height, o’er hollow! I’d be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.
A Lazy Day
Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
I think we are too ready with complaint
Excerpt from Cheerfulness Taught by Reason by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In this fair world of God’s.
Copywork Levels
If you are unfamiliar with copywork, refer to the basics of copywork and to Charlotte Mason copywork. Copywork is not just for handwriting practice. So much else happens while copying from great literature: vocabulary, grammar, composition…
And copywork can be used as a learning tool across a wide range of ages. It’s appropriate for all of the following:
- Learning Print: short words or phrases in large block type on lines with a mid-line
- Print Practice: short phrases in manuscript (block) type alternating with blank lines
- Print Fluency: smaller type passages in block lettering with blank lines afterward
- Learning Cursive: short words or phrases in large block type on lines with a mid-line
- Cursive Practice: short phrases in cursive type alternating with blank lines
- Cursive Fluency: smaller type passages in cursive lettering with blank lines afterward
- Full text on a single page for learning to copy directly from a text.
- Appropriate-sized blank-lined pages (small, medium & large) can be used to take any text and use it for copywork.
Once a child learns fluency, they can copy their selected passages into their commonplace notebook through adulthood. A child can use a commonplace notebook before fluency when they use care to execute properly.
Remember: Copywork shouldn’t take more than 5 -15 minutes depending on the maturity of the child.
Cursive or Print?
I favor learning cursive early for developmental reasons – cursive is much easier for little hands to learn. But everyone reads print first – think alphabet blocks – so it is important to be able to identify those block letters.
The jury is still out.
But I’ve been asked for some more cursive copywork printables, so I’ve made one based on these poems. It’s designed for cursive fluency practice, but I’ve got some various-sized blank lined pages for you at the end of the printable in case you want to make your own copywork.
Download your free copywork printable
Download your free copywork pages when you sign up for our newsletter. As always, pages are available in the Free Library if you are already signed up or if you want to download them again, but you need the secret password.
Text of the poems in the pictures
Here are the full texts of the poems in the above images, in case you need that.
Summer Evening
The sandy cat by the Farmer’s chair
Summer Evening by Walter de la Mare
Mews at his knee for dainty fare;
Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse
In the dewy fields the cattle lie
Chewing the cud ‘neath a fading sky
Dobbin at manger pulls his hay:
Gone is another summer’s day.
Summer Stars
Bend low again, night of summer stars.
Summer Stars by Carl Sandburg
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.
A Lazy Day by Paul Dunbar
The trees bend down along the stream,
Where anchored swings my tiny boat.
The day is one to drowse and dream
And list the thrush’s throttling note.
When music from his bosom bleeds
Among the river’s rustling reeds.
No ripple stirs the placid pool,
When my adventurous line is cast,
A truce to sport, while clear and cool,
The mirrored clouds slide softly past.
The sky gives back a blue divine,
And all the world’s wide wealth is mine.
A pickerel leaps, a bow of light,
The minnows shine from side to side.
The first faint breeze comes up the tide—
I pause with half uplifted oar,
While night drifts down to claim the shore.
Keep Learning
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